I’ve been thinking about survival. Before writing this morning I asked myself, “How did you survive when things were so awful?” When I was a child and teen I had a very rich inner life. When I was a little kid my imagination helped me to go to other places in my mind. Most of the time this was a good skill although sometimes it would lead me into imagining hell and other scary scenarios. At times I would get stuck in a loop and it would be almost impossible for me to escape these imaginations. It was like a virus that had to run its course. Now I understand that it was trauma. Often escaping these cycles of thought required something stronger to override their power.
On good days I would imagine myself as Wonder Woman. My bike would become her invisible plane and I would fly through the neighborhood solving crimes and kicking ass. When I close my eyes I can still go to that place. I can still feel my bike beneath me and the wind gently sweeping across my face. When I allow myself to go to that place in my mind immediately a smile creeps in. My bike was freedom. It was a way for me to work out all of my frustration and pent up anxiety. Those endorphins are good medicine.
Physical exertion has always helped me cope in difficult times. When I was a child riding my bike along with other things like gymnastics and hitting my tennis ball against the wall could help me get out of my head. I never enjoyed gym class but it wasn’t because I hated exercise. It had more to do with the social dynamics at play and being forced to participate in team sports that I did not care for. I have never really been comfortable with competition. During gym class I was often picked last. My family did not care much about sports so I had little exposure to things like football and baseball. My parents enjoyed solitary sports and my father enjoyed boxing. They instilled in me an appreciation for being outdoors and competing against self vs others. My father in particular was always pushing me to run farther and faster. He would shadow box with me and I was fond of playing with his boxing equipment. Jump roping was another activity I enjoyed. I would count my jumps to see if I could beat yesterday’s number.
Luckily for me I had a very creative mother and she instilled in me a love for art and music. Art in particular helped me to escape the sadness that permeated every part of my life. I could lose myself in a flow state. I could spend all day drawing or gluing popsicle sticks together. I played with clay and always had tons of coloring books around. To this day when I need to shut my brain off for a bit I will color in my adult coloring book.
Music was another thing that supported me when life was too tough to take. I have always enjoyed singing and my mother would sing with me at home. My father was very sentimental and he always had music on as well. I liked some church music but secular music was so much better. Church music just reminded me of things that made my anxiety worse. It is true that listening to “worldly” music would bring about a sense of guilt but the happiness it brought made it worth it. Secular music offered me a chance to escape into the world of the song and imitating the artists allowed me to try on different identities. It did not take long for musicians to surpass television and book characters as the focus of my escapism. I spent so many afternoons singing into my hairbrush imagining being anywhere but my bedroom.
Fast forward to now and my coping mechanisms are the same. I would like to say that they are all good but that would be a lie. I can still go inside my head and lose myself in my inner world. Sadly it is not always friendly inside my head and I no longer see myself as Wonder Woman. Going too deeply inward can often turn into dissociation. It is like I’m not really present but floating above my body or just outside of the frame of my life. Disconnected from what is happening right in front of me. It isn’t that I have anything terrible to escape but it has become a coping mechanism I employ in order to handle anxiety. Suffering from Complex PTSD means that as good as life gets I always have to remind myself that I’m no longer living the life I lived in the past.
Television helped me to handle the lonely days of childhood and it can still help me at times. I have to be careful because it can become a numbing mechanism, keeping me from being present. I realize that it was a numbing mechanism when I was a kid as well, but survival requires doing what you can to get through. Now I have other better ways of coping and so I have to remember that. What works best is being mindful. Mindful of which television shows I watch and that applies to other things as well, like podcasts. By choosing things versus just numbing out it helps to keep me present.
I still love to exercise. Moving my body helps to keep me sane. Just like when I was a kid, endorphins are great medicine. I can tell when I haven’t moved my body enough because my anxiety becomes really high. Exercise allows me to shut my brain off for a while and just be in my body. Not floating above like when I’m dissociating and not numbing out either. It is like my brain becomes still, which is not a state I can easily achieve. My body gets to release all of its pent up frustration and anxiety. Even as I write this I can see how I separate my mind from my body instead of seeing myself as a whole being. Fractured is the word that comes to mind. It probably would not surprise you to know that I view myself as broken. I have to fight that thought and feeling. Yes, I have C-PTSD and that makes me different from most people but it doesn’t make me broken. I have to work very hard to send my poor injured brain love instead of berating myself for not being “fixed” by now.
Creating art is probably the most pure thing in my world. I still use it as a coping mechanism but at the end I have this beautiful piece of expression to hold in my hands and enjoy. The act of using my hands to create soothes my anxiety and allows my mind something wonderful to focus on. If left to its own devices my brain just naturally wonders to a sad place, that is my set point. Sometimes it is depression and much of the time it is just a result of my lived experience. Creating helps me to breathe deep and lose myself in that flow state once again.
Music is still so dear to me. Some of my only happy memories involving church revolve around singing and music. My husband and I recently went to see The Avett Brothers in concert. Nothing beats being in the midst of a crowd singing along to your favorite song. I often come away from these shows with aches and pains from dancing and jumping around to the music but it is worth every bruise. Music is a double edged sword. It can heal or hurt depending on what I hear. Hearing hymns or the dreaded Thief in the Night song which shall not be named can trigger me in pretty profound ways. Songs get stuck in my head and it can be VERY hard to get them out, that being said nothing heals like music can. It can erase my anxiety and help my mind to shift when a trigger threatens to overwhelm me.
“One little song
Give me strength to the leave the sad and the wrong
Bury safely in the past where I’ve been living
Alive but unforgiving
Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go”
Souls Like The Wheels- The Avett Brothers
It’s funny how I’m still that little girl I used to be. I still use the same coping mechanisms to survive. Someday I would like to see myself as thriving and not merely surviving but I’m not there yet. When people ask me how I made it through my childhood it can be hard to answer. Some of it was the methods I mentioned above, some was luck, and some was a toughness gifted to me through my parents. Yes, things were very hard but they could have been worse. Especially when you stop to consider how often I was left unsupervised. In many ways my life is a miracle. I’m here and I’m safe.
If you are a survivor I hope you can hear this next part very clearly. If you need to numb or dissociate to get through whatever you are going through do not beat yourself up. Are there better coping mechanisms? Sure, but sometimes you can’t reach them for a whole host of reasons and so doing the best you can today is ok. I am 51 and I have been working on healing myself for a long time. We are not all in the same place and so wherever you are I’m glad you’re here and I hope that tomorrow is a better day. When I speak about my own survival I am not judging you for where you are in your journey towards healing.
I attended an Accelerated Christian Education school or A.C.E. If I could change one thing about my childhood after taking SD out of the picture I would change my educational experience. It would have been better to stay at my public middle school and get beaten up every day rather than spend one day at Calvary Christian Academy. Going to school there has impacted my life in nothing but negative ways. A.C.E. was big on being in the world but not of the world and so they tended towards isolationism. We never socialized with people who were not in the UPC church, so I believe it made sense to them that they should have their own school to further ensure isolation. I was really excited to start school there. My mother’s friend Juanita went to work making my uniforms which was a relief because we did not have much money for school clothing. This was supposed to make things easier. In one way wearing a uniform made it less obvious that we did not have money, in another way it created an additional stressor each fall. We had to find someone to make me a uniform and over time more and more that responsibility fell on me. I hated those uniforms. They were ugly polyester and uncomfortable. The worst part is they made us stick out like a sore thumb. I’m sure we looked like a crazy cult whenever we went out in public for a field trip. They were supposed to equalize the students. Wearing the uniform was supposed to take away competition over clothing and put the focus onto learning. It did not really work that way. Kids know which families have money and which ones do not, a uniform is not going to change that.
I entered Calvary Christian Academy with so much hope and soon discovered that I was wrong. It was nothing like I was expecting. While in public school I excelled at pretty much everything and always received good grades. Teachers liked me and told my mother that I was very bright. I never had any behavioral issues and I enjoyed learning. When I left Calvary Christian Academy my spirit was crushed and I believed I was incapable and unintelligent. As a side note, these schools have a pretty bad track record for traumatizing kids. There are support groups and FB pages where you can go to get support if you attended one of these awful schools. I cannot overstate how bad this educational choice was for my mental health. Whatever was started when I went through my salvation experience combined with being molested by SD was finished by the school. It was a completely joyless experience.
If I had to use one word to describe my time at Calvary Christian Academy it would be loneliness. We were required to spend most of our day sitting in a tiny office with slats on either side. We had very little human contact, it was a bit like solitary confinement. My mind would drift to just about anything to take me away from my lonely situation. Oftentimes this meant my mind went to SD, my parents, and other problems. Alone I would contemplate my life and in these lonely hours, my depression became like a roaring lion, loud and hard to escape. Maybe had I been in public school someone might have caught my depression and offered a helping hand. This kind of thing did not happen at the church school. Within the church school there was only right and wrong, black and white. If a student was struggling they never asked why. You either completed your work or you did not. Punishment or avoiding punishment was the name of the game. In the early days I was so thin and rarely ate much at lunch. I would go sit in the church parking lot and wait for the others to come out for recess. No one ever asked why I didn’t eat or if we had enough food for lunch. Our emotional wellbeing never mattered, what mattered was were we following the rules and were we completing our goals for the day. I would argue that even our physical wellbeing wasn’t much of a concern. I would go to gym class and we often held that class outside. We would go to a neighborhood park. They would stick me somewhere in the outfield amongst the dandelions and grass. My eyes would be watering and I would be sneezing and no one really cared. I would wheeze when I ran and I think they just thought I wasn’t athletic. What was actually going on was that I had bad allergies and playing in a field was just not a good idea for me. The allergies led to asthma and that caused my shortness of breath. I know I keep beating this drum but I feel it is necessary. I cannot overstate how I felt like no one at school or church, speaking of the adults in charge, ever cared about my emotional, mental, or physical wellbeing. Instead they judged me and others and kept score of our shortcomings. I was at church more than I was at home, in some ways the church raised me, and yet to this day they refuse to take any responsibility for the ways in which they harmed and neglected myself and many others.
I am a kinesthetic learner. Reading all day to learn and never having any experiences or debates/discussions did not work well for me. I was bored stiff and now getting a double dose of indoctrination. Originally I thought this school was going to be perfect for me because I was always ahead in school and bored with the slow pace of things. Accelerated Christian Education is set up so that each student can work at their own speed. All this did for me is provide me with the opportunity to be way ahead in some subjects and terribly behind in others. I did pretty well across the board until I hit Algebra or the dreaded math pace 97. Algebra was pure misery for me. It caused me so much stress and the lack of empathy and real help from the staff lead me to feel stupid and incapable. We had no real teachers, you were expected to figure it out from reading a booklet (PACE) you were given and then work through the problems. Our monitors and supervisors, who passed for teaching staff, were not licensed educators. One of them had a nursing degree, one was the church secretary, many of them were youth leaders, young ministers, and their wives. It seems to me that working in the school was some kind of hazing for young ministers. Put your time in here and then you can do other stuff. Be a youth pastor and if you do a good job there we will give you other responsibilities. They may have passed algebra at some point but that was a long time ago and it did not mean they knew how to teach it. None of it made sense to me. I would call a monitor (adult staff who were supposed to help you) over to my office for help and nine times out of ten they had no idea what to do for me. They would suggest I ask my supervisor who at the time was also my principal, youth leader, and at times Sunday school teacher for help. John Seidl had so much power and influence over my life and empathy and compassion were not his forte. I would wait, sometimes for hours, for him to come over and help me. He would get frustrated that I could not figure things out and I would end up in tears erasing holes into my PACES. My experience was that the adults would get frustrated because they did not know how to teach and that would all roll down onto the students. I hold John Seidl very responsible for all of this. He was the principal for most of the time I was attending. He never once offered to give me any extra tutoring and he never tried to find any other way of helping me learn outside of just telling me to read the PACE. I spent so many nights crying over algebraic story problems. My mother would look on with sympathy but she had no idea how to help me. My mother had been a truly awful student. She got Ds all through school and I think it shocked her to see me struggling. School had always been so easy for me. She did not know what to do or where to go for help. We’d seen a warning this might be coming in the 5th grade when I really struggled with fractions. Luckily my babysitter was able to help me and then everything was fine. I just needed a little extra to get me through.
To pass a class you had to complete 12 PACES (these were little booklets with a test at the end) and take the final test. If you did not pass the final test you had to take the whole unit over, all 12 PACES. You must get 80% to pass. I would often clock in at 76% and be told to start over. I even once had a 78%. It should take you a year to complete algebra and I just kept working through the same PACES and taking the test over and over again. Soon it started to affect my science education. You could not pass through science without algebra so my science education just stopped at physical science. I would be sent home with whatever I could not finish in school, this did not help, no one in my home knew how to work these problems. I would return the next day with unfinished work and then be given demerits. These demerits meant you did something wrong. I would have to stay in my office while everyone else went out for recess. I would be punished for weeks at a time for not understanding what they could not teach. Some of this is my mother’s fault. She should have intervened and found me help or maybe decided this school wasn’t for me. Instead, she left me hanging. The school staff knew I was trying and only one of them ever took compassion on me. One day Kitty, the elementary school supervisor, came to my office, one time, and told me to just go out with the other kids. She also helped me with algebra. She wasn’t a great teacher but she showed me some empathy and for that I am grateful. Those long stretches without even recess to look forward to are really depressing to think about even now. Plus now I was struggling and falling behind in two subjects. On a brighter note, I went back to public school for my last year of high school. I took algebra and passed with a B+. My algebra teacher told me I just needed to be shown a different way to look at it. He was a good teacher and helped to restore some of my confidence. I feel like if I had been attending public school and struggling like this safety nets would have kicked in. My mother would have been pulled into the conversation more. I would have had tutors available and maybe a teacher who would meet with me during off-hours. None of that happened, they just let me twist in the wind.
Because I believed that my supervisor was frustrated with me and because they punished me instead of helping me I felt even more like an outsider. I had no refuge except for maybe the library. Home was awful and school was awful. Because the school was in the church basement and because I would soon be a Bible quizzer I was spending 7 days a week at the church. I was at church as much if not more than I was at home. God and the church had completely swallowed my life. Instead of bringing me joy unspeakable and full of glory all I experienced was being driven to death by my commitments and judgement.
Every part of the school day was highly regimented. There was no time for asking questions or free thinking. The Bible was our main literature book. Why do you need anything else when you have the Bible? We never read any of the classics or really anything except for the dreaded allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. One of my great joys was discovering books, especially classics. This leads us to one of the most subversive things I ever did, I went to the library. We lived just a couple of blocks from our local library and I loved to visit there. I consider myself lucky to have developed an early love for reading and an understanding of how libraries worked thanks to my early public school education. At that time you were not supposed to read things unless the church approved or it was written by a UPC author. Adults could read things by Christian authors who were not UPC if the topics were marriage and raising children. The adults knew how to discern when doctrinal lines were crossed in a way children and adolescents did not. Because my mother was not strict about standards and because no one was ever watching me I would often escape to the library. My heart would leap just approaching the building. Looking through the windows and seeing all of the books was my signal that I could breathe easy. Within these walls were adults who would help you find great reads and not judge you or give you the stink eye for asking. My neighborhood library had a great kids section and young adult area. Later I would bring my own kids there for story time. Once inside, after carefully checking the parking lot to make sure no one would see me, I would make a beeline for the teen area. I always read way above grade level and so even at 11 or 12 I would seek out books meant for a much older audience. Once I found a book I liked I would quickly find my favorite blue cushion to recline on. I always sought out a corner where I could shrink into my cushion and hide from the world. I did not bring the books home so sometimes I would be disappointed when the book I had been reading was checked out. Once I was sunk down into my soft spot I would bring the book to my nose and breathe in the smell. I loved the smell of books, I still do even if it drives my allergies crazy. My happiness could never be complete or free of worry. I worried someone from church would come in or see me coming in or leaving. Now I see how silly that is, they would never be in a library. I think I was always scared. I read lots of Judy Blume who I loved in late elementary school. This led to other things, even romances. I felt guilty but the pull of fresh reading material was too much to resist. I would tell myself later how dumb I had been to risk my salvation for a stupid book, I would promise to resist and make God happy, but I never kept that promise.
I have to stop for a minute here and praise librarians! They were friendly adults in a world where that was hard to come by. They recognized me when I came in and were always ready with fresh suggestions. They made me feel welcome and normal.
I hated Pilgrim’s Progress. It was boring but my hatred of it seemed deeper than just boredom. To this day I do not know why I hated it so much. I asked my principal if I could instead read C.S Lewis. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia and had read them in the 4th grade. That opened a whole unexpected can of worms! “C.S Lewis is not saved? He is not UPC and we do not agree with his theology.” I argued, “It’s an allegory and that is what I’m supposed to be learning about. Isn’t Aslan a picture of Jesus? Isn’t it very clear that Jadis is the bad guy?” But I could not budge him. That was the day that I learned my most beloved books were sinful. They had talking animals and witches in them. How had I not seen it? I thought since I saw them at Zondervan’s (the Christian book store) they would be ok. This was a crisis for me. I loved those books dearly, like an old treasured friend. I never got rid of them, in fact they are in my basement right now. They are super dogeared and well loved. I read them over and over in bed at night for probably three years. Mr. Tumnus was as real to me as anything I ever learned in the Bible. But even the joy of my favorite books was in part ruined by the guilt of knowing I was doing something sinful and rebellious. By the way, Pilgrim’s Progress was not written by someone within the UPC either, but it was a part of the approved curriculum. It seemed like the adults in my life were on a mission to rob me of any little thing that might bring me some comfort.
Zondervan’s Christian book store was another way I sinned or played too close to the danger zone. We had one in our local mall and every so often I would wander in there and look at their books with one eye on the door. I knew people from church bought music there but the books were a no-no. Too much strange theology, too many opposing viewpoints. You might learn about grace or God’s love. The United Pentecostal Church International claims that their mission is “The Whole Gospel To The Whole World.” I do not feel I received the whole gospel, especially not the parts about grace, compassion, and caring for others.
One day when I was at the library and just wandering around and I discovered something wonderful, magazines! My fingers glided through the glossy pages and my eyes drank in all of the brightly colored ads. The librarian saw me and came over to tell me about the teen magazines. She knew me well and would often offer her suggestions. What? You have teen magazines? I knew about these magazines because I would see them at the grocery store but I had never purchased one. This was a whole new world. Even in my extreme joy at my discovery there was a strange knot in my belly. This was wrong. These girls were made up like harlots and the topics within the magazines were sinful. The funny thing is that back in the early 80’s the girls in the teen magazines looked much younger and more innocent than young women in similar magazines today. It was all about fashion, music, boys, and makeup. These publications were like drugs to me, I couldn’t get enough. My mother even started buying them for me from time to time when we had the money. She saw them as harmless but I knew that they were bad news and I should feel bad for having them. I liked fashion and dreamt about makeup, I even liked the heart throbs on the covers but in the innocent way young girls like boys. This is where I learned the tip about clear nail polish. After getting into trouble because of the nail polish these magazines felt even more dangerous. At this point I started to feel like two people. The angel and the devil. I loved God and tried so hard to be good, to act right, to remember to repent everyday and to be of service. The devil side of me wanted all of this contraband, this was my flesh, the part of me that was impossibly sinful. I wondered if all of this was because of SD? Had my sinning with him opened some sort of Pandora’s box of evil within me? Would I ever be right? At this point I could not imagine a life not soaked in fear, guilt, and looking over my shoulder.
Fashion and the letter of the law but not the spirit. There were always certain adults who seemed to disapprove of me and give me the side eye. This is not uncommon in a church that is so legalistic where folks thrive on judging others. They compare themselves to others in order to gauge how close to God they are. I was always careful to follow the church’s holiness standards when it came to how I dressed but I was too young to really understand them. I wore skirts or dresses all the time. I did not public swim because wearing a swimsuit was a no no. My dresses always came to the bottom of my knees or lower and my sleeves were always three quarter length or longer. In gym class the girls had to wear pleated culottes so that is what I wore. Still even with keeping these standards I felt like it wasn’t good enough but I did not understand why. My mother was no help really. Her main concern was whether or not I was wearing a dress to church. She had always required that even before we joined the UPC. She always said you have to wear your best, whatever your best is.
I became an amazing bargain hunter and that super power still serves me today! I started to babysit and so I could make a little money here and there. One day I found the most beautiful fuschia shoes I had ever seen. They were on clearance and in my size! I tried them on in the store and I never felt more fancy than I did at that moment. I was about 12 or 13 at the time. These shoes were ridiculous and if any of my daughters had tried to wear shoes like that at that age I would have said no, wait till you’re about 21. They had a four inch heel and they were a shockingly bright color. They had a fake snake skin pattern on them. I would never attempt to walk in shoes like that now, but to my 13 year old self those shoes were the height of fashion. I wore them to church in the middle of winter. They were a strappy sandal and not good on the ice and certainly could not keep my feet warm. So here I am at church wobbling around on these stupidly high heels feeling like a million bucks! That is when people started staring and even asking questions. Some of the adults laughed when they were asking me about them the way you might laugh at a child who is being silly, but I did not understand at the time and I thought they were making fun of me. It hurt and it took all of the air out of my happy find. “Does your mother know you have those shoes?”, “Where did you find those?”, “Don’t you think those shoes are a little too high for you?” One of the girls close to my age later told me her mother said they looked like hooker shoes. As adult after adult questioned me and smirked I started to feel shame. I’m not even sure if I ever wore them again. What I know now is that shoes like that would have been considered too immodest. They would be seen as trying to draw attention to my legs and therefore cause a man to fall into sin. But at that age my mind did not automatically go to those places. If my legs were mostly covered what difference did it make? The part of this story that makes me laugh is when I went home. An adult couple gave me a ride home and I must’ve fallen four times between their car and my front door. At first I did not find it funny but after the fourth fall I had to join in with their laughter. I must have looked like a baby deer trying to walk up that sidewalk. I was wobbly in those shoes even on carpet so glare ice was near impossible to walk on. I think I left my boots at home because I wanted everyone to see my pretty shoes. I paid for it in bruises to my ego and legs.
In the 80’s textured tights were a big thing. I was very fond of these tights that had tiny hearts on them and I had them in many varieties. Red tights with white hearts, white tights with pink hearts, and more. Soon after that came tights with a seam up the back, tights with flowers snaking up the ankle and tights with polka dots. To me they were so pretty and fashionable but to the adults around me they looked too old for me to wear and drew way too much attention. The thing is this was the early 80’s and it was what young teens were wearing. I did not get it. To me they were pretty and feminine. My young mind could not understand the connection between my polka dotted tights and men’s lust. To me it was about fashion, my tights with the hearts on them matched my purse with tiny hearts on it. It was about looking my best. My mother never complained and so I assumed it was ok. When I think back to that time I was the only teen dressed like that and I am sure it is part of the reason why so many adults gave me the side eye and did not want their kids to have anything to do with me. Especially the boys. This is just an example of how an adult could have come alongside me and explained how it looked to many people. Instead of gossiping and judging they could have simply talked to me.
My happiness was found in a $72.00 Jessica McClintock Gunne Sax dress. Every Easter my parents would buy me a new Easter dress. Many times my dad would come through for me. He hated being around for the hard stuff but liked to show up and be the hero from time to time. He took me to the mall and we started combing through the racks. My heart leaped when I found my dream dress hanging there. It was a Jessica McClintock and it was on clearance! Even on clearance it was $72.00 and I knew it was nothing more than a dream. These dresses were very easy to spot at this time. They looked vintage and were outside the stream of pop culture fashion. They reminded me of the dresses I would draw for hours as a child. In grade school I became obsessed with the Gibson Girl style of dress and drew those dresses over and over complete with parasols and fancy boots. My father looked at the price and said sure I could have the dress! I stood there frozen in my disbelief, then I grabbed the dress before he could change his mind. It was a tiny bit big on me but who cared? It was perfect and I felt like the richest girl in town for a moment. When I brought the dress home my mother was livid. She was so angry that my father had spent that much money on my dress. I was confused but knew enough to just go to my room. Who could understand my parents’ issues with each other? He bought me a dress and now you don’t have to, was how I saw it. My mother had every right to be upset. He never paid child support and couldn’t be bothered when I was hungry. She saw through him and knew all he wanted was to look good to me. Easter morning was the next day and I put my dress on with some pretty tights with flowers on the ankle. I was a walking flower that morning. When you are poor, and you have body issues, it is a big deal to feel so pretty if even only for one day. This dress was magickal! It had a lace collar that went all the way to my neck and it fell almost to my ankles. The body of the dress was a very pale almost white lavender and it had light green vines with tiny flowers all over it. Covering my chest was a light lace bib, this thing was like something out of a Disney movie. The sleeves came all the way to my wrists and were kind of gausy and ever so slightly see through. A slim panel of lace went down both arms. I was covered and I mean covered from head to toe.
I glided into church that morning feeling like a queen. The church secretary thought it was very important to point out to me that you could see through my sleeves. I have olive tone skin and you could ever so slightly see through my sleeves but you had to be really looking. I went to my seat and started to feel self conscious. Could you see through my sleeves? Did I miscalculate? Was this dress sinful? Once again one of the church harpies had ruined my happiness, but not for long. My friends LOVED the dress and it became a big deal for many years. When we would go to camp we would often trade dresses for the evening service, this dress was always the top request and in heavy rotation. Somehow it never got ripped or too dirty. It was magical. I recognized as I got older that it was edgy because of the sleeves but I wore it anyway. Now those Jessica McClintock Gunne Sax dresses are considered vintage and still go for a ton of money. My early teenage dream was to someday glide down the aisle in a Gunne Sax wedding dress. My first wedding dress looked alot like what Lady Diana wore on her wedding day, not a Gunne Sax but still hyper feminine.
I’ve written all of this to explain not only how the church stole my joy at every turn but to also illustrate how I did not understand the standards. I was following the letter of the law but not the spirit. I think I thought I was following the spirit of the law but my young mind just could not anticipate what would be an issue. My mother did not follow their standards and thought I looked fine. The ladies at church would make snide remarks but no one ever thought to sit me down and explain things. It was more fun to talk about my mother behind her back. About her poor parenting and not following the holiness standards herself than to take pity on a kid who just needed someone to explain things. My friends would tell me how their parents did not approve of my clothing and that hurt. I did not understand. My 13 year old mind would not have expected that a man might get turned on by the sight of my arm or a calf with tiny hearts on it. My world and self esteem could have been so much better had someone just been compassionate and talked to me about the standards, not from a judging place but from a loving place. I was proud of every pretty thing I owned because I bought most of it. I hunted for sales and collected bits of, what I thought were acceptable fashion, and kept them as treasure. But even that pride at having found these beautiful items was sinful.
“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
Looking back I have to ask myself, “What is wrong with these men?” First of all, why would they be looking at pre-teen and teenage girls to start with? If they are lusting after children isn’t that their problem? Why does the church ask young girls to protect men from lusting? It seems to me that they may have understood that they had problematic men within the congregation and so instead of removing the men they laid a heavy burden on the girls. Better to keep sleepy men around who pay tithes than to take action to protect children.
While all of this was going on with SD I was going through many other transitions. We moved to a new rented house. My mother felt it was an upgrade but I did not. It was old and always dark due to our lack of lighting. My bedroom was on the second floor. There was a third bedroom on the same level as mine and also a full bathroom. The third bedroom served as a sort of catch-all junk room. This is when my mother started to acquire more dogs. Muffy had passed away after being lost in a snowstorm and then hit by a car. I was heartbroken. My mother brought home a puppy to try to cheer me up. His name was Billy and I loved him. She also added another male named Star and a female named Sheba. My mother had a big heart for animals, sort of. She would give them a home but then not take them to the vet regularly. We never had money so I don’t really understand why she thought adding more mouths to feed was a good idea. At times the dogs would go to the bathroom in the spare room. It smelled so bad and I would go in and clean it up because neither my mother nor Jim seemed inclined to do it. My room was always fairly clean because I had almost no possessions. The items I held dear were my cassette player, my tiny radio shaped like a grand piano, and my books.
At some point during the time that SD was abusing me, I started to receive Harlequin Romances every month. I never signed up or paid for them and so now I have to wonder if SD had them sent to me as part of the grooming process. My mother didn’t seem to care so I gobbled them up. I loved reading and could finish a book every day during the summer months. When I was bored I would stand on my bed and sing into my hairbrush pretending to be on stage. There was a big mirror on top of my dresser and so I would look into that and sing Amy Grant. Every night before bed I would write in my diary. It was a white Precious Moments diary with a little gold lock. The pages had gold edging on them and I thought it was so pretty. That diary was the only place I had to really express what I was going through. When my mother picked the lock and read it I was so betrayed. It makes me sad to think that she did not see the abuse that happened to me. She didn’t seem capable of showing compassion. She just saw that I was writing about sex and “dirty things”. I cataloged each experience with SD as they happened and how I felt about it. Sometimes I would write messages to God asking for help or forgiveness. Eventually, my mother caught me experimenting with my own body and she hit the roof. It makes me so angry when I look back at it all. It is normal for kids to experiment at that age and when they have been abused it is even more likely. She was angry and she ridiculed me and even brought Jim into the conversation. For weeks afterward, they would make jokes about me and because of this, it was finally driven home that I could not trust my mom and that she no longer cared for me. I was embarrassed and felt exposed just like I did when she showed my father my bloody underwear when I got my period. She did not value my privacy or the bonds between a mother and child. She did not seem to understand boundaries. My mom and Jim fought a lot and at times that spilled over to them ganging up on me.
When I needed to escape I would jump on my bike and ride all over the neighborhood. My bike always symbolized freedom and speed. When I was feeling angry I would ride as fast as I could just to get the rage energy out. One day I hit an uneven piece of sidewalk and flew face-first into a tree. My forehead, nose, and chin were very bloody. I don’t remember if anyone was home and I also don’t remember anyone helping me tend to it. I was really embarrassed about it when I went to church the next Sunday. People kept asking me what happened but they seemed more amused than concerned. It took forever for the scabs to be totally gone. When I wasn’t riding my bike I would walk through the green space behind our house and over to the shopping center. The shopping center had a library and a Pharmacy. Before I went to the library I would walk through the pharmacy and see what new candy and doodads they had. Then I would go over to the library and sink into my corner
During this time when I went on the road with SD he always left me in the car when he went in to see clients. All of his clients were churches and so I would hang out in the car, usually parked on the street, and wait for him. Sometimes I would be out there for a very long time. I always brought my library books with me so I had something to do while he was gone. Sometimes I would listen to my tape recorder if I had enough batteries. It didn’t bother me much because I was so accustomed to being alone. I was afraid sometimes when it would start to get dark and I was out in the car in a strange place by myself. Before long SD would breeze back in and we would be on the road again. When we arrived back in Madison SD would always park a block or so away from my house so he could kiss me and say his goodbyes. At times we would talk about my mom and my home situation. He would tell me that someday I would be grown and I would not have to live there anymore. He would tell me that it would only be another 7 years or so and then I could move out, proving he understood exactly how old I was. Other times he would speak to me about the condition of my clothing. One particular day he commented on how much dog hair was on my clothing. I told him that I did my best to look nice, he said he knew that but I could tell he was frustrated by my appearance. It was also during one of these goodbye talks that he told me that I would be perfect if I just lost some of my belly weight. I wasn’t even 100lbs at this point. I have never had a flat stomach even when I was a size 3. I have never forgotten that conversation. I can see us clearly in my mind’s eye. I know exactly where we were and I remember what I was wearing. That small comment marked me and made feel bad about my body. After saying his goodbyes he would pull into my mother’s driveway and let me out reminding me not to let on that there was anything going on between us. Often my cheeks were red from his stubble and my clothes were shifted around all weird. If my mother was awake we might chat a minute and say goodnight. She never asked me much but did comment once on how red my cheeks were. I was shocked! It never occurred to me that they were red and I told SD about it. I made up some excuse to my mother and hurried off to bed. She never asked about it again. Stepping out of his car and into my house was like moving from sunlight into the night in one moment. Yes, I was being abused, but at least he talked with me and we laughed. When I walked through my front door the house was usually dark and silent. I would grab my oil lamp and slowly and quietly make my way up the stairs to my bedroom. Once in my room, I would fall to my knees to pray. One night my mother knocked on my door and asked me through the door why I cried and prayed so much. I had just returned from a Sunday night service and I was feeling pretty heavy-hearted. I told her I had a lot on my mind and she seemed satisfied with that. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she was my example. She taught me that through all those nights I waited for her by her bedroom door. I would pray for her and my father to come back to church, I would pray for SD, and I would pray for forgiveness. I worried about my mother’s salvation and I worried about all the fighting I heard between her and Jim. Even as she became meaner and made me the butt of her and Jim’s jokes I continued to hope that we could repair our closeness and I hoped maybe one day she would leave Jim like she left my father. She did eventually leave him but not in the way I wanted her too.
I started the 6th grade in public school and then partway through the year, I transitioned over to the Christian school. Sixth grade was difficult because we moved away from the kids I had known all the way through elementary school and so I started middle school not knowing anyone. I believe that I am very lucky to have had a good foundational public school education. I was ok with the move. I was ready for change. In elementary school, I had a few friends but I was also frequently bullied. I was picked on for being poor and for wearing worn clothing or generic cheap clothing. After my boobs came in I was picked on by the boys incessantly. There was a lot of bra snapping and one boy, in particular, was fond of calling me titties. I was more than ready for a fresh start. I liked middle school. I played the clarinet and I enjoyed all of the electives I was allowed to choose. I felt like a big kid and that was pretty cool. The downside was racism. All during my elementary school days people both children and adults would ask me, “What are you?” Meaning you don’t look totally white. Usually, they would start guessing and no one ever guessed right. They would often guess mulatto (their word not mine), mixed, Hawaiian was another popular guess, but never Mexican. It became a game for me. I would collect all of their guesses and then tell them, Mexican! I enjoyed seeing the looks of confusion and bewilderment on their faces. Madison did not have many Mexicans and so no one suspected that. I never endured racism during elementary school but I did watch my father deal with it. I remember one day we went into a men’s store to purchase a new suit. I stood with him fidgeting and trying to be patient. He knew what he wanted and was looking around trying to get someone’s attention. The store was fairly empty and yet no one came to help us. Finally, he was able to rope someone into talking with him. I watched as he pulled wads of cash out of his pocket and told the man how he had money and he was sick of people assuming he did not. The salesperson seemed nervous and unsure of how to deal with this angry customer. We slowly walked out, my dad mumbling the whole way, we had no suit in hand. My dad had a chip on his shoulder but who could blame him? He would often tell me how no one expected him to be capable of anything but he was going to show them all what he could do. He would recount how he came here alone from Mexico and how he taught himself to read and write English. At this point I’d listen and feel sad for him, by the time I was a teen and hearing these tales for the 1000th time my eyes would glaze over.
Sixth-grade girls can be incredibly cruel. My new school placed me in a bilingual class because my maiden name is Rodriquez. This is kind of funny because I spoke zero Spanish except for what I had learned on Sesame Street. Uno, dos, tres…My father wanted to forget his life in Mexico and so he only spoke English around me. I kept pleading my case to the teachers but they did not immediately believe me. After about two weeks they pulled me from that class and put me into an English speaking homeroom. The Mexican girls would taunt me and call me half-breed and they claimed that I thought I was better than them because I was placed with the white girls. The white girls also called me half-breed and just kind of shunned me. I was dealing with it ok until the Mexican girls turned violent. One day on the playground one of the girls told me she was going to beat me up. All-day at school my stomach churned and I would have done anything to not have to ride the bus home from school. About five girls got off the bus a stop earlier than they usually did so they could beat me up. They chased me from the bus into an empty lot. The bus driver yelled at them from his window but then just drove away leaving me to endure the blows and kicks. I curled up in a ball on the gravel and just waited for it to be over. My mother had views on fighting. She told me I should not get into fights and to be the bigger person and I was more afraid of her than I was of these girls. My father would have said to fight back because we are fighters. He was an ex-boxer and had taught me to swing my fists. In the hierarchy of my family, my mother ruled overall so I was more worried about her feelings on the matter. As a side note, my mother was a violent person. She and my father got physical and she was always the one to instigate. She also got into plenty of fights when she was a kid but she wanted me to be different. I managed to get up and start to flee the couple of houses distance to my home. They chased me and Jim just so happened to walk out of the house and see what was going on. He yelled at them and they ran away. I was humiliated and covered in dirt, gravel, and spit. I went inside and cleaned myself up. My mother was not home and waiting for her was partly scary and partly I just wanted my mom. When she arrived Jim told her what he saw and she called me down from my bedroom to talk. She wasn’t too angry with me and agreed to go to the school tomorrow to talk with the principal. She did not get too much satisfaction from that meeting. They explained that they could only help if it happened at school. My mother was frustrated but she understood and she came up with another solution. Her solution involved me taking the city bus every day. I hated this! It took me twice as long to get there and did not save me from the bullying behavior at school. Once it got around that there had been a fight and that I had not won things became much harder.
I told some kids and adults at church about what was happening. I asked them to pray for me that things would get better. They had an even better solution, they had their own school and I could go there. No one gets bullied there (a lie) and I would no longer have to be around worldly kids. That last part sounded appealing. One thing I was teased about was how little I knew about pop culture. Because I was trying to be godly I had stopped listening to the radio and watching tv for the most part. I had nothing to talk to these kids about. I floated the idea to my mother and at first, she was not too excited about it. It wasn’t cheap. But hey the church could solve that problem too, they had scholarships available! This seemed like exactly what I needed. My mother found someone to make me the uniforms and I was ready to go. I had NO idea what I was getting into and to this day I view this as one of the worst decisions I ever made. All of my church friends were super excited for me to be joining them at school. Calvary Christian Academy was one of the most boring places you could ever spend time, so the excitement of having a new student was extreme. I received so much positive feedback. The message I received was that I was finally taking my Christianity seriously, I was finally fully committing to the church, I was finally in!
I think they might have viewed this all differently had they known what was about to happen with SD. At the time the church would have said that they had the school to protect their children from the world. I believe the truth is that they had the school to exert complete control over their offspring. Cults in general do not like their members to have any outside influences and Calvary Gospel is no different. Thinking outside of the church’s beliefs was not allowed and you were expected to reside in lockstep with the pastor at all times. Opening the school made it even easier to train children to fall in line with the absolute control of the church and then one day they would be adult followers who would never even think of leaving. If you are born into a family within the Calvary Gospel, and then you attend the school, by the time you are an adult you have almost no contacts outside the church. It makes leaving really hard. The church is the entirety of your community.
This is the point in my life when my light was almost completely snuffed out. Long gone was the little girl making dandelion crowns and in her place was left an empty shell. My mother worked hard but there was never enough. You can only eat so much baloney. Jim could never keep a job and so he was not bringing any real income into the house. He did like toys and my mother did what she could to buy him what he wanted much like she had done with me when I was a child. There was always money for another dog or a new gun but not enough to pay the light bill. In the space of one year, my world had become unrecognizable. I was ten when I was baptized and by age eleven there was almost nothing left of who I was before. In a childhood punctuated by loneliness, being saved actually made things much worse. I stopped wearing pants and cutting my hair. This only served to make me stand out even more once I started middle school. I only had three outfits for public school that fit within the UPC standards and so I rotated them. My 6th-grade homeroom teacher started to keep track of how many days in a row I wore a dress. He was a little weird. He looked like grizzly Adams and all the girls really liked him. This was the most pious time of my life. I tried to not watch television and almost never listened to “worldly music.” That being said, pop culture would always be my weakness. At times when we had electricity and cable, I would sneak and watch television and even MTV. I have spoken so much about our poverty but there were times when we were able to keep our heads above water and even have little luxuries like cable. During these good times, I would struggle to keep myself holy and away from the evils of Madonna and HBO. The United Pentecostal Church has very strict holiness standards and I tried to follow them all. Those standards served to further alienate me from my peers and family. My mother never embraced the UPC standards and so she swung from telling me they were too strict to feeling enormous guilt and beating herself up. She cut her hair, wore pants, watched television, and listened to the radio because she was not brought up to feel those things were entirely wrong. I spent time alone in my room to avoid the tv. When we had electricity the tv was always on and I always had this inner fight about it. I wanted to be with my family but I was afraid that if Jesus returned while I was watching I would miss the rapture. Escaping the guillotine was a strong motivator. So I sat in my room alone. My non-church friends drifted away because I could no longer do most of the things young kids like to do. Some of them even told me that their parents said I was in a cult. One might think at least I had the church kids but that did not pan out the way I expected either. There was a hierarchy and I was near the bottom. It went something like this: pastor’s kids at the top, any minister’s child, elder’s children, and then whoever gave the most money, the poor, and last those of a race other than white. I was very poor and my parents did not give the church tons of money, I was also of mixed heritage and that was a problem. The only kids worse off than I were the kids who were black or even worse half-black. I was able to elevate myself with some of the adults because of all of the work I did for the church, bus ministry, nursing home ministry, campus ministry, and being the Bible quiz captain. As I got older and adults learned I could sing they would allow me to sing duets with other adults but never a solo. The kids didn’t care about any of that. They saw my race, my class, and that our parents did not associate with each other. Plus I also suspect that I was a little socially awkward. I had been alone so much and really only hung out with adults. I never knew how to connect with kids my own age.
Even with my extreme fear of hell, I would sneak contraband from time to time. I wish I had a better memory of exactly what was happening in our family financially. We had times where we went out to dinner every payday and even had cable and there were times when we had nothing. My mother worked at a laundry for much of my young childhood and occasionally Pizza Pit as a side gig. Eventually, she landed a job driving a city bus and things became better for a time. She wanted to be a police officer and almost made it but she was unable to pass the fitness test. My mother suffered from pretty severe asthma for most of my childhood and it kept her from making her dream a reality. That being said, a city job was a city job and she was happy to be hired to drive busses. This job came with good health insurance and a free bus pass for all family members. She had cable installed and then it became much harder for me to resist the television. In particular MTV and HBO. I loved music and I was drawn in early by music videos. Madonna was the biggest draw and I just couldn’t get enough of her. I tried to dress like her which is hard when you can’t wear jewelry, makeup, or pants. I wore lacey bows in my hair to be like her and I think as a small act of rebellion. Don’t let all of this make you think I was less afraid of hell, I wasn’t, but it was becoming harder and harder to resist normal popular culture. At church, they would bring in speakers to talk about the evils of rock music and they always scared the heck out of me. They played recordings of records played backward (backmasking) and told us what the hidden messages were. “Here’s to my sweet Satan” was the real message of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven. “It’s fun to smoke marijuana” is what Freddy Mercury was really trying to tell me in Another One Bites The Dust. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was scared of many rock bands because I really believed that they worshipped Satan and they wanted to infiltrate my mind with their demonic messages. Even Falco was in league with the devil when he spoke about, “…no plastic money anymore…” because he was talking about the mark of the beast and glorifying the antichrist. Rock Me Amadeus wasn’t even evil backward; it was right there in plain English, well mostly German. The Beatles thought they were more popular than Jesus, Ozzy Osbourne was always biting the head off of some bird or bat, and I mean just look at Alice Cooper. The problem with all of their efforts to steer us away from the evils of this music is it was the 1980’s and that is not what we wanted to sneak and listen to. I wanted Madonna, Pat Benatar (They did eventually get to her after all she sang “Hell Is For Children”), and all the new wave English bands. All this scary rhetoric would cause young people to throw out all of their music and come crying to the altar to ask for forgiveness.
I think all this fear mongering is why I never heard or understood about grace. The goal always seemed to be to scare us down to that altar and then keep us in line by reminding us about hell and the rapture. God was not loving and he did not seem to want to help me, he was a scorekeeper and was waiting with glee to exact his revenge on anyone who did not fall in line.
So much of the approved music was so boring and repetitive. This is part of the reason I loved Bible camp so much. The music we were exposed to there was of a much higher quality than the music we heard in our home church. I always sang in the choir at church camp. The music would make me feel like I could float to the rooftop on the joy of it all. Then I would have to return home and it was back to the dull and uninspired. When Roy was our youth pastor it wasn’t so bad but when John took over he held much stricter views about music. He would say if the choice is to listen to “Christian Rock” or real rock and roll then he would prefer we listen to Christian rock. On the other hand, he held the opinion that if it is Christian then it is not rock. I remember standing in the vestibule one night after church watching John, our youth pastor rake a young man over the coals for listening to some kind of rock music. I felt bad for him because anyone walking by could see what was happening. My heart ached for what must have been an embarrassing experience for this kid. He was a friend of mine and I felt protective of him. Why not have this conversation somewhere private? My guess is straight up lack of compassion. No thought was given to how this may have made this kid feel? Pre-teens and teens are so easily embaressed by adults. Sometimes it seemed that those in charge of the teens were just lying in wait to catch us doing something wrong. Add to that the general negative attitudes towards us kids and lack of pats and the back and you can see it was a pretty toxic and unloving environment.
The same thing happened with makeup. I loved to think about makeup, and dream of makeup, and if you know me now you know none of that has changed. Makeup was a big big no no. You don’t want to be like the evil Jezebel or Delilah do you? Evil temptresses who lead men to hell with their eyelids and lips.
Proverbs 6: 24-26 “To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take you with her eyelids. For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.
Proverbs 5:3-5 “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold in hell.”
At Bible camp they would preach on the evil’s of makeup and all of the girls would bring their hidden stashes up to the altar. More tears, more repentance, and all for that cherry Lip Smacker that made your lips ever so slightly more red than what they naturally were.
While writing this my mind keeps returning to the idea of joy. When I was a young person the church really was a thief of joy. We were not supposed to take joy in clothing or things of the world, we were only supposed to take joy in Christ. After raising four children of my own I can see how unnatural this is. Young people take joy in so many things. I loved to see my children discover a new author or musician and then become totally enthralled with it. I watched them try on new styles and identities as they matured and it brought me happiness to see them embrace the freedom they did not know they had. I believe the idea that everything is a sin can stunt the growth of young people. It keeps them from experimenting in life and that can close so many doors. I mourn my childhood and all that could have been had I had the freedom to choose.
During kindergarten and first grade, we were lucky enough to live only two buildings away from the elementary school. It was a great place to live because I could walk to school easily and it created a cozy environment. Our block was mostly middle-class homes mixed with apartments. About a block and a half from our building was a tiny store where I bought ice cream and popsicles. I learned to jump rope and ride a two-wheeler when we lived there. When everyone had gone home for the day and the parking lot was empty I would go and hit tennis balls off the school building. I got pretty good at returning the ball with my huge adult man-size tennis racquet. Even at the age of 5, I was already a free-range kid. I played by myself and most of the milestones of that age like getting the chickenpox or learning to ride a two-wheeler I experienced alone. Jerome was my one friend. He lived next door and would often come over to play in the backyard. He was kind of an odd duck and he was bullied at school. We got along ok even though he would never let me play Spock when we played Star Trek. Spock was a boy and I was a girl so that was a no go for Jerome. I always admired Spock because to me he seemed to be the most intelligent. He is still my favorite.
My parents bought me a red bicycle. It came with training wheels and I kept asking my dad to put them on for me. Of course he did not do it and one day I got tired of waiting. I drug my bike out to the driveway/parking lot of our building determined to teach myself to ride. Because it was the middle of a work day there were no cars in the lot, thank goodness for small blessings. I hopped on my bike and attempted to balance and move the pedals at the same time. I spent the whole afternoon trying to bike up and down the long driveway. I fell often and my pants now had holes in the knees. By the end of the day both of my knees were skinned and blood ran down my chins and into my socks but on the other hand I was riding my bike! I was so excited to show my mom and dad when they returned home at the end of the day. My mom was really upset when she saw my knees and her and my father started to argue about how he was supposed to put the training wheels on my bike. On this day their fighting could not dampen my spirits. I could ride my bike and I learned all by myself. For many years, really up until young adulthood, riding my bike was an escape for me. I loved the speed of it all and how far it could take me from home and my everyday hell.
Before I learned to ride my bike I wanted a Big Wheel! Other kids had them and I was glued to the commercial every time it came on the television. My parents eventually bought me one, but not really. They purchased a knock off version that was actually better made and more sturdy but it was just not the same. It was rusty brown in color and had real tires. It left me longing for the red, yellow, and blue plastic that the other kids had. Fitting in was hard. I just wanted what the other kids in my neighborhood had.
My father is Mexican and that created some hurdles. We did not know any other Mexicans and no one really looked like me. Poverty and religion did nothing to help. We were dirt poor for much of the time we lived there. The cracks in my parent’s marriage were already starting to show. I have always wondered why at times we had no money but then at other times we seemed to be doing pretty well. I can remember times when we would go out to dinner on Friday nights and my mother would take crafting classes. Neither of my parents could really manage money but the swings in our fortune seems to swing too wildly for money management to be the only cause.
My father came home one day with a brand new red Firebird with black leather seats. I have no idea how he was able to afford this car. When he first brought it home my mother was not pleased but eventually she made peace with it. Once in a while, my mother would drive his car when we would travel to see my grandparents. She learned to love the car and received many speeding tickets while driving it. I know there were times living in that apartment when we had no food, so I’m not sure where the money came from. After infidelity, money was always the hot topic of my parents’ disagreements. We were often one bad week away from having our lights turned off or having no food. At this point, my dad was still mostly living with us at home but before long that would all change. My father was a bit like a feral cat. He wanted to be able to come and go with the assurance that he would be welcomed back with open arms when he needed a place to come home to. Even in his happiest relationships he cheated. He couldn’t bear to live the sedate life of a middle class married man. He wanted to mix it up with different people. He craved novelty and despised feeling caged. I think he had a deep hole inside of him that he could never fill. He was always seeking women and praise and no matter how much he received it was never enough. He was always on the make and I’m sure his red Firebird helped him feel more confident when out looking for women. I have no doubt that my father loved my mother, I’m sure he loved me too in his own twisted way, but he loved himself more. He felt entitled to be unfaithful and resented being questioned. He led two lives, one where he was married and had a child and then another where he was single and had no responsibilities. When he was feeling beat up by the world he would come crawling home to my mother but when he was feeling high on life we were on our own.
After he and my mother split I took her place. I would see him when he was between women and then not when he was dating someone. I grew up resenting this and always seeing myself as second place in his affections. I felt disposable. I have always believed that one of the biggest issues between myself and parents is the fact that I could really see them from an early age. I think I made them uneasy. They never hid anything from me so I couldn’t help but see it all. I tried to hide from what I saw. I wanted to believe the best about them. I needed to be able to trust them. It was easy to see that they did not understand each other. At this point I still wanted them to stay together, but it would not be long before that opinion changed.
Several major things happened while we lived on School Rd. First, a man broke into my bedroom while I was asleep and my dad had to chase him off. The man managed to get one whole leg and the top portion of his body through my window. I can still remember my dad standing in the doorway of my room holding a flashlight and yelling. He is wearing a white T-shirt and boxers. The wind was slightly blowing and the curtains on my window moved in the breeze. By the light of the flashlight, I could see a figure with one leg dangling over my windowsill. Before I could really register what was happening he was gone. My parents called the police and I remember the cops trying to get prints off my windowsill. They also looked for footprints outside but it was raining and so nothing could really be found. This event made my sleep issues even worse. I think it also fed into my mother’s fears and may have triggered her worries about locked doors and windows. It gave my father something to brag about. My dad was a golden gloves fighter in his youth and he always saw himself as tough. Now he could tell people how he scared this guy away and saved his little girl. Experiencing this made it even harder to be a kid home alone. There were periods when I had a sitter and then periods when I did not. Just like with the money issues I have no real grasp as to what caused the lack of childcare.
I started kindergarten when we lived on School Rd. As usual, something that should have been focused on me was focused on my parent’s drama. My mother couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t take off work to take me. When I think of my own little ones going to kindergarten it fills me with bittersweet memories. As a mom, you are both proud and sad. I think I cried with all four of mine making sure to do it once I was in the car so they couldn’t see. I do not remember it being much of a big deal for my parents. My father had his own business and so it wasn’t hard for him to take me. I was so excited because he told me we were going to go out to breakfast beforehand! This was a big deal! I was such a daddy’s girl. He took me downtown to eat which was kinda far from my school and when we arrived at the restaurant my dad introduced me to a woman. She sat down and had breakfast with us and much to my surprise, she and my dad had a long conversation in a language I did not understand. I knew my father could speak Spanish but I had no idea he could speak French. So what I thought was going to be a special first day of school breakfast with my dad became the day I realized he was cheating on my mom. At this age I had heard them fight about his infidelity but I did not really understand what it all meant. I did not have the language for it but I knew something was off. After breakfast he took me to school very early, I was the first one there, and I had to sit there with this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel some part of me thought I had done something wrong, somehow participated in his wrong simply by being there. After school, my mom and I talked about the highlights of the day. I finally broached the subject with my mom. She was mortified and more than that she was furious. I told her everything I knew, which wasn’t much. I did know the woman’s name, it was Jennifer and she was a French professor. Of course, my father tried to pass her off as just a friend but my mother wasn’t buying it. After that things were never the same, she always suspected him and he always gave her a reason to. Jennifer had an apartment on the lake and my father took me to visit with her. She was nice enough but I just couldn’t feel comfortable around her because I knew the pain my mother was going through. My mother would cry and tell me that men are dogs who cannot control themselves. It made it hard to love my father. I felt guilty for wanting to see and spend time with him. She would call him a “dirty Mexican” which made me feel bad about the part of me that was Mexican. I was old enough now to understand that my father and I were different from most of the people around us. Over time my mother would become more and more unstable when the topic of my father’s infidelity came up. Once she took me with her when she went out looking for him. At this time they both worked at the same place and mother suspected my father was carrying on with a co-worker. My mother drove over to her house with me in tow. Like Karen from Goodfellas, my mother called to my father’s mistress through the door. She banged on the apartment door and finally, the woman answered. She only opened the door a crack but that was all we needed to see my father sitting in a chair in his boxers. My mother did not have the foresight to leave me in the car so I bore witness to her calling to my father and him shaking his head refusing to come to the door. I don’t remember what happened after this. I have since learned that this often happens around traumatic memory. You remember the event but maybe not what happened just before or after. This is because when in a state of trauma your brain doesn’t make a memory in the same fashion as it does when just experiencing life normally. I only imagine how humiliated my mother must have been. When she was in that state of upset she would drive like a lunatic all the while crying and screaming. I can only imagine how scared I was. To this day I know exactly where that apartment building is and which unit she lived in. It remains a landmark representing pain and the ghosts of the past.
The last major thing I can recall from School Rd is hunger. I don’t think my father was around much at this point. He had a key and would come and go as he pleased. Home or not he couldn’t really be relied on for financial help. When I was in grade school we had the option to walk home during our lunch hour and have our lunch at home. I never made this choice unless I had no other option. It was a warm spring day when I dashed home over my school lunch break. Feeling for the key around my neck and using all of my strength to turn the deadbolt. I didn’t have much time and so I raced to the kitchen and found the peanut butter and a butter knife. I didn’t bother to sit down but instead scooped as much peanut butter as I could onto my knife. Grinning, I licked a huge chunk off and felt the emptiness of my stomach subside. I continued scraping and scooping the almost bare jar until it was time to go back to school. Hunger was with me for much of my childhood and the peanut butter was all we had on that day. No bread, no jelly, and no milk to wash it down. At this age I really loved peanut butter so at least I really enjoyed the one food we had available. There was some shame with this act. It felt wrong to only be eating this one thing for lunch and it felt wrong to be licking it off the butter knife. We had learned all about a balanced diet at school and I knew this wasn’t going to cut it. One day our next-door neighbor asked me why I was home in the middle of the day. When I told her I had nothing to take for lunch she took pity on us. She met my mother at the door later with groceries. My mother smiled tightly and said thank you. Once we were safely inside our unit she let me have it. I learned that day that I was never allowed to talk about being hungry or anything else with other adults. My mother warned me about this thing called social services and how they could take me away if I complained too much. She also talked about God and how we should always look to him and not the government for help. Very early on she instilled in me a fear, fear of other people, fear of the government, fear of the rapture, fear of God, and lastly she taught me to fear her. There were other times when we had enough food and I would end up in conflicts mostly with my father. It seemed to me I had no control over what I put in my body. Much of the time there was very little to choose from in our house. It wasn’t very often that my mother would let me pick things from the store because we were always on a budget. This meant there wasn’t much variety to choose from at home and then my father had very strong ideas about food. One night after sitting at the table taking too long to eat my peas my father decided he would force-feed me. I was about five years old. He held my mouth open and made me eat all of the peas on my plate. I was out of control sobbing and almost immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up all of my dinner including the peas. This involuntary action earned me a spanking. From then on I almost never felt good about food, either because we didn’t have enough or because I felt judged for what I did and didn’t like. My father liked to preach to me about eating and exercise. Every choice I made equaled me being good or bad, the stakes were always so high in my family. Both my parents were very judgemental but my father was more judgemental about food. I am much more relaxed about food now but I feel like it has taken me a lifetime to overcome my anxieties around food. I cannot bring myself to put a pea into my mouth.
As I grew older I questioned why God did not provide for us and then I would remember that to suffer was to be like Christ so I should be happy to have this struggle. When I would ask people at church about why bad things happened to us they would always say so that we can help others later on. They would remind me that God has a plan for all of us and his ways are not our ways. My child mind was too little to understand the ways of the almighty God. Through all of this, I developed the idea that money was bad and wanting it was worse. There were higher things to be concerned about. Focus on heaven and maybe you will forget being hungry or being bullied for being poor. I had one horrible tormentor who was worse than the rest. One day she and her lackey discovered me riding my bike after school. I was wearing a new off brand puffer vest my mother had purchased for me. It was ugly. Lime green and yellow. It wasn’t a cool color like the other kids had, but my mother had tried and so I wore it. My bully stepped out in front of my bike so I would have to stop or hit her. When I stopped she spit all over my vest. Then she and her lackey laughed and made fun of me as I cried. I biked home to clean up my vest. I felt terrible because my mother was home and she would see the mess. But yeah, focus on heaven and forget being worried about your off-brand clothes and no food.
“And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20.
I was not moving any mountains which meant I did not even have faith the size of a mustard seed. My mind was failing me. I could not believe hard enough to save my family and I couldn’t control my doubts. Doubting God was a big no-no and I was failing big time in that department. At this point, I never put any blame on God but took all of the blame on myself. I must be doing something wrong if I could only figure out what it is! I wish that I understood why I took on so many adult ideas when I was so little. I suspect it was because I was never allowed to be a child and my parents always spoke to me like I was an adult. Oversharing caused me to consider things only an adult should worry about.
Around age five is when many of my worries and fears really kicked into high gear. I worried about my keys and setting my alarm and on top of that, I wasn’t really sleeping. I don’t think I was ready for this responsibility so it took a lot out of my 5-year-old brain. I would lay awake at night thinking about the rapture and the ticking of the clock would remind me of the beginning of “A Thief In The Night.” As a side note, to this day a ticking clock can trigger me. I will start to feel like I cannot catch my breath and my fight or flight reflex will kick in.
I wore two keys around my neck. One for the outside apartment building door and one for our unit lock. I can remember struggling hard at times to turn the key in the lock and I remember asking adults in the complex to help me if they were passing by. Not the safest plan. If my mother was running late for some reason I would worry. I would often get to school very early because I was worried about being late. Before leaving the house I would check my lunch box multiple times to be sure my lunch was in there. Through all of this I learned to be very responsible and also a little neurotic. When scary things happened, no matter how big or small, there was usually no adult around to help.
Sometimes when my parents fought it was just screaming and yelling. My mother would get in my father’s face and he would shut down. Often it felt like violence could break out at any moment. I know pushing and shoving happened between them. My mother would make some pretty scary threats and I believed she was capable of carrying them out. Now I am not saying that my dad was innocent. He was awful with money and his source of income was not always the most reliable. He left my mother to pay all of the bills and carry all of the stress of working and raising me. Add onto that all of the cheating and it is easy to understand why she would get upset. She would cry and rage and I would be in charge of comforting her and helping her to cope. This was a big job for a little girl. This job would often leave my stomach in knots. So much to be concerned about. Money, cheating, my mother’s mental health and then just regular kids stuff. I was made fun of throughout my young childhood. I never had the “right” clothing. My mother would shop for me at Prange Way and fashion was not the consideration. Her concern was getting the most bang for her buck. I begged for Garanimals when I was really small but I don’t recall her buying them often. She once bought me these knock off Nike’s and for the rest of the school year this one boy named Mike called me “Polish Nike’s.” My mother tried to get me what I wanted but it was always a little off and so I was often the butt of the joke at school. My mother was a very hard worker and I don’t fault her for not having money, at least not when I was young. Her work ethic was stellar, it was just her mothering that needed some work.
One fight I remember very clearly involved my mother raging at my father after finding evidence of his cheating in their car. I crouched in the lowest part of the hall closet and watched through the barely cracked door. She was pushing and shoving him and he was raising his arms to defend himself. Her words rang out through our apartment, “If you ever do this again I will string you like sausage from the trees!” At the time I couldn’t really understand what her words meant but once I became old enough to understand, her words chilled me to the bone. She even went so far as to grab a sharp kitchen knife. As she brandished it at him my father looked like a little boy. He never forgave her for those moments and would bring it up often as an excuse for why he left her. Hiding in the closet I cried and wished that they could figure out how to get along. In those moments I tried to make myself as small as possible, something I still do today when I’m confronted with very angry outbursts. They both seemed unaware of how their fights impacted me. They never attempted to hide any disagreements from me. My father would always leave and tell me to watch over mom. When I would go off to spend time with my father my mother would tell me to love him and be kind. No matter what they did to each other and no matter how they spoke about each other to me, at the end of it all would come the admonition to love the other parent. They both reminded me it was my duty to honor my father and my mother. It was like they could not love each other properly so they used me as a surrogate. My father knew my mother needed watching over so he tasked me with that. She knew he needed acceptance and love, so she tasked me with that. No thought was really given to what I needed. When he wasn’t staying with us he would arrange to see me. My mother would dress me up and I would wait by our big picture window for his car to pull up. Sometimes he wouldn’t show. He would later tell me they had been fighting and he did not want to risk my mother coming out and making a scene. This left me standing at the window for hours. Each hour washing more and more of my hope away. I needed a break from her and I missed him so much. She never pulled me away from the window. I remember one day he was supposed to come to get me at lunchtime and I waited for him by the window until my mother forced me into bed. I was in the second grade.
I could never understand how my father could leave me with her. He always claimed to be afraid of her and the violence she threatened but then felt fine not only leaving me with her but tasking me with caring for her. As I got older I would challenge him on this topic and he would always say he never believed she would hurt me, but how could he be so sure? In my father’s narrative everything was my mother’s fault. He cheated because she was mean and he left because she was violent. He couldn’t come around to help with finances because he did not want to fight with her. In other words, in his mind he bore no responsibility. I suspect my father was fighting demons no one knew about. He never wanted to talk about his past and when he did his stories never added up. I always felt like he was hiding something from me. They were just really bad for each other. While I was still in elementary school they both tried to commit suicide on the same day. I stayed with a family friend and then my aunt until my mother was able to leave the hospital. It was on that day I decided I just wanted them as far away from each other as possible.
Both of my parents were checked out much of the time. I was raised by television. Many of us who grew up in the ’70s had this experience. I lived my day according to what show was on next. The people on television were my friends and they kept me company while my mother was away. I would build tents out of the dining room chairs and blankets from my bed.. My dog Muffy and I would hunker down inside and eat snacks while watching Gilligan’s Island. I loved building those tents. Once inside it felt like I was in a different world. Under my blankets with my furry companion felt safe and warm. I can still feel the softness of Muffy’s fur and the way she smelled. Muffy was my only company when my mother was away. She was a beautiful white Samoyed dog with happy brown eyes. She was very easy going and always willing to play tea party with me or even dress up. To this day I love dogs and I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Muffy for taking care of me. For the first ten years of my life, she was there. There were times when she was the only being around to comfort me and she was often the only really dependable thing in my life. She was like a second mother to me and many of the good memories I have from the first 10 years feature her.
In the morning my alarm clock would go off and I would hear Bugs Bunny say “Eh What’s Up Dock?” I loved my Bugs clock! Alone I would get up, eat, and get myself ready for school. I knew when “Leave It To Beaver” came on it was time to go. At the end of the day when I returned home, I would watch “Bugs Bunny” and “Gilligan’s Island”. Most of the time the television was just on as background noise to keep me from feeling alone. I would bring art projects out into the living room and work on them in front of the television. When there was nothing on tv I wanted to watch I would go play in my room or I would play outside. Sometimes I would play with friends but I felt guilty about leaving Muffy alone if she had been alone all day. I wonder if she saw my being out of the house as a break, much like a young mother might relish nap time. For a little bit she would not have to be my Dressy Bessie.
In the evenings my mother and I would watch “Sonny and Cher”, “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and “Charlie’s Angels”. I enjoyed all of these shows. When my mother was home we would often sit on the floor, in the dark, and she would bring out a big bag of nuts from the kitchen. It was like being in a movie theater. She would crack the nuts open for me and we would have them as a treat. Sometimes we would have a generic soda too. My mother loved orange, grape, and root beer flavors so that is what we had to choose from. When I think of these times with my mother it warms my heart. It calls to mind the physical closeness I so needed and that could be hard to come by. I lived for these moments. The person I loved best in the world was finally there beside me and she wasn’t crying or screaming, she was laughing. In the dark it did not matter that we had no sofa to cuddle on or that the devil might be hiding in the closet, all that mattered was that we were together.
I really loved Cher! She was one of the only people on television who looked like me. Certainly, she was the only woman I was aware of. She had long black hair and olive skin just like mine. I loved seeing all of her glamorous Bob Maki dresses. She was both beautiful and talented. She gave me the impression that she ran her own life and maybe Sonny’s too. She was confident and I wanted to be like her. Another woman I admired from television was Lucille Ball. I thought she was beautiful as well and so funny. Lastly, there was Carol Burnett. I did not see her as a great beauty but as the funniest woman ever! I loved her show and couldn’t wait for it every week. When it went into syndication, I could watch it in the afternoon. I never missed a show. These women helped me to develop my sense of humor. Cher was sharp and kind of dry, Carol and Lucy perfected physical comedy. When my mother would go into one of her depressive moods I would act out scenes from these shows to try to make her laugh. If that didn’t work I would dig into my candy stash to find something to make her smile. My mother loved candy so the combination of my best Carol Burnett impersonation and a Snickers bar could go a long long way.
On the action side, I could not get enough of “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Bionic Woman”, and “Wonder Woman”! These women inspired me to be strong and athletic. I would run through the woods pretending to be Wonder Woman! I love those memories. I had a fort in the trees and I would perch on a branch and pretend to be in my invisible plane. I saw myself in these characters. They were tough, confident, and dependable, all things I hoped to be. I tried and tried to make my hair do the 70’s flip or feather, no matter what I did it never worked.
To this day I love female comedians, especially if they embrace physical comedy. I enjoy female cop shows and superhero characters. When I get lost and I can’t find my way they help me to get back to myself. They remind me of who I was at the beginning, who I am at my core. They remind me of my mother, which can be both good and bad. They remind me of how far I’ve traveled to get to where I am now. They continue to provide comfort and inspiration!
Television offered me predictability and comfort. Shows were almost always on when you thought they would be. I could see this extended family whenever I wanted and they would always be the same. The sounds of their voices coming down the hall from the living room made our apartment feel like it was full and not so empty. I feel the shows helped me to become more socially confident. My mother and father were socially awkward and so they did not provide good examples of how to fit in. I have always felt odd in the world but it could have been much worse. I watched these shows and learned how to interact with people and it showed me how adults should be with kids. Television helped me see the inappropriateness of my parent’s behavior. Television also helped to keep the things I was afraid of at bay.
When I wasn’t watching television I played outside. We had a small wooded area next to our apartment along with a large hill and field. On the other side of the field was my elementary school and playground. When the weather was nice I would play in my “fort”. Wonder Woman was my favorite scenario. Those woods had the potential to be so much. They could be my invisible plane when I climbed the tree and sat on a branch that overlooked our street and the low brush was my fort or secret lair. The large rocks made great chairs and an easy to move low hanging tree branch served as a secret invisible door. In the summer it wasn’t
unusual for me to waste the afternoon running through the tall grass having spectacular adventures. Even in these happy times fear followed me around lurking behind every tree and waiting for me at home. When I think of that fear now I can feel it in my chest. I can imagine it is not unlike what a rabbit feels when it senses danger. You become still and hope you can’t be seen.
My dog Muffy liked to be outside when it wasn’t too hot. She made a pretty good playmate. Even though she was a big dog I managed her fine. She never ran away even when I dropped her leash. Even though I don’t think she enjoyed it much, she would climb in the sled with me and go down the hill. Well, truth be told she only made it half way down the hill before jumping out of the sled and running to the bottom to meet me. Once at the bottom of the hill she would chase after me to get to the top and do it all over again. When the weather was warmer she would play kickball with me. Which meant I would kick my small red rubber ball and she would chase after me as I pretended to run the bases. When we grew tired we would plop down in the grassy field and I would make dandelion jewelry and crowns. I was very allergic to both the grass and the dandelions so it didn’t take long for us to be driven back into the apartment to cool off. Once inside I would grab a popsicle and arrange my dandelion creations so that I could show my mother when she returned home. Often by the time my mother arrived they were very wilted. It made me sad that I could not figure out how to keep them pretty for her.
On other days I would slip through a small trail in the treeline behind our apartment that opened onto some railroad tracks. I would follow those tracks all the way to the beach. When I think about it now it seems so dangerous. I would bring a towel, some beach toys, and whatever change I could gather so that I could buy some ice cream once I got there. I would play in the sand and water all day without any adult supervision. To this day I am not the strongest swimmer and I recognize how lucky I am that I never got hurt. Even though it was dangerous I can’t help but think of these days warmly. My childhood was not safe by any stretch of the imagination but it was filled with childish adventure. I had so much unstructured time to explore the world around me and these days at the beach are the best example of this. All I need is to hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore and I’m instantly taken back to those days sitting on the beach eating a popsicle with my toes buried in the wet sand. By the end of the summer, my skin would be a deep brick-brown making me stick out like a sore thumb. Adults and children alike seemed confused and interested in my appearance. They would often ask me about my ethnicity and when I was young I thought it was kind of a game. Later it would make me feel bad about being different.
When I wasn’t outside I loved to create little art projects. My mother saw early on that I was a blooming artist and so she made sure I always had paint, markers, and clay to play with. My mother was an accomplished artist. Part of my desire to create was driven by wanting to be as skilled as my mother. She liked to draw nature scenes and especially animals. My mother grew up around horses. I could tell by the stories that she told me about her childhood that she loved her horses. I would ask her over and over to tell me about Dolly and the others. She would tell me each horse’s name and then describe what they look like. She would include details like which horse liked to get into mischief and which ones liked apples. I would try my best to draw them as my mother had described. I also drew my dream horse over and over again. He had a black tail and mane and was a deep chocolate color. I could never match my mother’s sketching talent and this distressed me. She bought me this large oversized book about how to draw horses and I spent many hours trying my best to follow the instructions. I became pretty good at it! But sadly never as good as my mother. It really bothered me. It took me until well into adulthood to be able to create art for art’s sake and to not be still comparing myself to my mother in my head.
After my horse drawing stage I moved onto my fancy lady stage. I was fascinated with dresses from the 1800s and I would draw what I called “fancy ladies”. Some would have parasols and others would have very elaborate hats. I dreamed of being like them. This led me to be obsessed with the “Gibson Girl”. I loved to draw elaborate updos from that trend and I would practice them over and over. I think this phase was more enjoyable to me compared with the horse phase. My mother did not draw these “fancy ladies” and so I was not constantly comparing myself with her. I could just draw for the love of drawing. For a long time Snoopy was a subject I would sketch over and over. I always looked forward to the Charlie Brown specials mostly for the scenes that featured Snoopy.
I tried many other crafts and it was easy because my mother had a closet full of half-finished projects. I spent hours playing with my spin art toy. It was one of those toys where you put the paper in the tray and then drop bits of paint onto it while it spins. I also learned to finger crochet and latch hook. I was not a big fan of finger crocheting but I loved to latch hook. I would sit side by side with my mother and we would make latch hook projects together. She also taught me to make little potholders with a plastic loom. When she was creating she was smiling. Right from the start, it was clear to me that she became bored much faster than I did. She would start a project and then get bored, it would go to live in her bedroom closet and maybe one day I would pick it up and finish it. This is one way in which my mother and I are very different. I hate having unfinished projects laying around. This goes for books too. I will finish the most boring books just because I can’t seem to allow myself to just not like something and then put it down. I really have no idea where this comes from.
I possessed a big imagination and it showed through in my playtime and art. I believe that my imagination is what got me through all of those long hours of being alone. When I think of this time it brings a smile to my face. I was a vibrant child so full of promise. When I think about it a little longer my smile turns to sadness for all of the hours I spent alone. It wasn’t safe and I never felt safe.
*This post could be viewed as graphic so reader beware*
When you grow up in a church like the one I grew up in virginity is very important. Alongside that goes the rampant sexual abuse of young girls. These two things coexist in an impossible way. Girls bear all of the responsibility for keeping themselves and the males pure even if those males are adults. The males can be forgiven over and over and never really lose any status but once a girl gives in she is forever ruined in the eyes of the church. After Steve Dahl abused me I was seen as a temptress and as spoiled. How sad to have the adults in your life see you as ruined at the age of 12. It hurt to be seen this way and it destroyed my self-esteem. I started to see my future as very limited. Women are viewed as only good for marriage and raising a family and you can only marry someone who is also United Pentecostal. I had 5 dating options within my church if I wanted to stay within my age group. If the parents of those boys saw me as dangerous or tainted they were going to dissuade their sons from dating me. This meant that I often dated and had puppy love romances with boys from other UPC churches. Their parents wouldn’t know about what Steve did to me.
At age 16 I dated a man who attended Calvary Gospel. His sister and her husband were part of the “in” group. This guy was well into his 20’s but no one batted an eye. I wasn’t anything to preserve or protect, after all, I was already ruined. This guy was a chronic backslider and he was the most dangerous choice I could find. At this point, I was so angry. A boy who I really cared about, one of the 5 options, had just broken my heart. I knew his mother did not approve of us being together. She made no secret of how she felt often saying things when I could easily overhear. It was after this break up that I started to see the church in a way that became harder and harder to look away from. I cried for weeks after this breakup. I would cry in my office at school and I stopped eating. Eventually, I withdrew from all of the church activities I was involved with and went from sitting in the second row to sitting in the back row. People would look at me kind of weird but no one said anything and none of the adults checked in on me. So I decided to rebel.
After years of feeling never good enough I decided to date Mike, the 20-something guy who I would eventually have sex with. We went to church together and everyone knew we were a couple but no one spoke out and said, “Hey that guy is an adult and she is underage!” It was accepted and I am sure the church saw it as a good match. The guy no one would want their daughter to marry and the teen no one would want their son to marry. People treated Mike fine, he was male, and whenever he backslid the prayer chain would light up. They had compassion for him even if they thought he was kind of a troubled guy. Our relationship was not a good one. He was mentally and emotionally abusive to me. He stalked me after I broke things off with him. One night, just like many of the evenings we spent together, we had sex. It was not special. It was more like checking something off of a list. I was detached from what was happening, being with Steve Dahl taught me how to do that. I wasn’t in my body or feeling anything. I was somewhere else watching someone else. I believe I felt that by doing this I would be stepping closer to adulthood and if the church was going to insist that I was a whore than I was going to be one. My heart breaks for my child self because I was still a child and I needed an adult, just one adult to care about me.
I have been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of days. It hit me, while I was doing yoga, and I see things clearer now than I ever have. Mike didn’t take my virginity. Steve did. By age 12 he was doing everything but having intercourse with me and he tried to have intercourse with me. Not to be too graphic but you don’t have to have intercourse to have penetration. All those years growing up in that terrible church the adults all knew something I did not. I kept thinking that I was still a virgin because I had not had sex, but they all knew what Steve took from me. I think this is part of the reason I felt nothing about what Mike and I did when we eventually had intercourse. This makes me so sad.
I want to close this post by saying I do not agree with Calvary Gospel. Losing your virginity doesn’t make you less than. If you are young and reading this please hear me! You are just as worthy before sex as after. If an adult is having sex with you or trying to have sex with you please tell someone. If the first person does nothing keep telling until someone listens. If you have been or are being abused please don’t take the shame of the abuser into yourself. The shame and responsibility belong to them. If you were abused and never told anyone that is ok too. If you want to tell now, even if the abuse has stopped that is ok too. You are good, worthy, and wonderful. I am here to support you along with so many others.
When I speak with survivors one topic comes up over and over again. The people in their lives who love them cannot understand why they continue to suffer from trauma and pain from the past. Friends, co-workers, and people they interact with online often seem to want to give them the same advice. They want to offer you a quick fix and often that fix comes with a warning about not forgiving or holding onto negativity for too long. What they don’t realize is that the process for working through trauma can take a lifetime. Forgiving and “moving on” is not going to resolve the trauma responses coming from the survivor’s body. It can seem like someone has moved on but if you’re not inside their head and their body you can’t really understand. Triggers can make it hard to not think about things and can effect the body in some very real ways.
When first leaving an abusive group you’re probably in survivor mode. You’re trying to figure out how to get away and then how to live without the community you may have been in since birth. People who have known you all your life might shun you or feel the need to warn you about hell and the coming end times. You may lose family and will most certainly lose friends in the process. Often you end up feeling much more alone than you could have ever imagined. You may not have the social skills needed to maneuver in the new world you find yourself apart of and you may lack job skills or be poorly educated. Add to this a fear of hell and the rapture and you can see why just getting out and acclimating to the world can be a very tall order. Once you’re out you may find yourself dealing with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and loneliness. I consider this to be phase one of three phases.
When I started phase one I was a teenager. I went from a very insular community out into a big world that I was not ready for. When I left the church no one came looking for me. I struggled through the realization that they didn’t care. I always suspected that but when it became a reality it hit me hard. I went to public school for a year and found I had nothing to talk to my peers about. When I was in the church I felt weird like I did not fit in and then when I went into public school I felt the same way. Everyone was planning for their future. I thought I had good grades and could have gotten into college but I had no one to help me navigate that journey. Neither of my parents attended college. By this time my mother was already pretty sick and preoccupied with raising my bother and dealing with her abusive husband. My father’s attitude was that if I had a husband I did not need an education. He felt the same way about driving which meant I did not learn to drive until I was much older. I discovered that I had missed many of the milestones that my peers had experienced and would continue to miss them because I had no way to know what was normal and how to get those experiences for myself. Over time I came to realize that my Christian school had supplied me with a subpar education. If I had someone to help me navigate the gaps I could have taken classes to fill in what was missing, the issue is I did not know what I did not know. I worked in restaurants for a long time and got a little apartment for myself. I did what I had to to survive and tried to tell myself that I had time and everything would be ok. I was always afraid of a wrathful god. When I cut my hair and pierced my ears there was this moment where I was just waiting for lightening to strike. This new world was both exciting and scary.
The next phase comes when you finally feel free from the group and you try to convince yourself that you can live without them and just get on with things. Many people I speak to can be stuck in this place for decades. They convince themselves they are doing great and have just left it all behind. Reality is usually much different. Sometimes during this period addictions will show up as a coping mechanism. Many survivors try to fill their lives with activities, family and work in an attempt to forget about the trauma, but the unresolved trauma is still there like a ticking time bomb. During this time if you talk about your trauma or pain people will often slap you on the back and say something like, “But you’re away from them now so life must be good!” This is phase two.
I left my abusive group and then jumped right into another one. I hear that is not uncommon. I only stayed in that group for a couple of years before leaving. During this phase, I reveled in my freedom and filled my life with having children and experiencing as much as I could after a life of real restriction. The pain of my past never went away. It was always lurking in the background with it’s best friend fear. I tried to listen to what pop psychology told me. I tried to release the past and I tried to forgive. I tried to get on with my new life. Now I’m not saying those are bad ideas, all I’m saying is that they are a very simple answer for an extremely complex problem. They did nothing to address my C-PTSD and in the end, I just ended up feeling more broken because I couldn’t just get over it. Over time I got more and more sick. I have always had insomnia but as I’ve aged it has become much more constant. The underlying stress and anxiety brewing within me caused me to have severe stomach issues that I am still trying to heal. I also have asthma which I do not think came from the trauma but it is well documented that mental health has a big role to play in how severe asthmatic symptoms are. My body was trying to send me messages and I just kept turning the music up louder and trying to convince myself I was ok.
Phase three is what I like to call the “wake up” phase. Sometimes it happens suddenly and sometimes in little things that add up to a creeping realization. By this time the addictions are at a breaking point or maybe you just don’t sleep anymore. However it displays, you reach a point where you can no longer ignore the toll the unresolved trauma has put on your body. Things will pop into your head that you just can’t shake and you can no longer make excuses for. I feel people often reach this stage when they are in midlife and things slow down a little. They have age and experience which causes them to view the world differently. They are fully adults now and are in a better position to judge where they came from. This is usually a crisis breaking point. Illusions fall away and the past you have been hiding from is waiting there for you.
My phase three went on for a very long time. Over the years the creeping realizations would make it hard for me to ignore what happened in the past. When my oldest child reached the age I was when I was molested I realized how little she was. I could see how sweet and innocent she was and I had a bit of a crisis. These things would happen from time to time over the years. As I matured I could see clearly the past decisions that the adults made around me during my childhood as monsterous and cruel. For a long time I would make excuses for them and try to find ways to not face up to how bad things really were. Once I started writing this blog I started to really wake up. It felt like blindfold after blindfold was ripped from my eyes forcing me to look at the trauma I suffered and get real with myself about the repercussions of it. This can be really hard, when you get to the point where you can’t look away. You can no longer deny the truth in front of you or make excuses for people’s bad choices. It forces you to change the way you think and can really change your life in profound ways. Some people lose what remaining family they have, some people just realize the depth of what was done to them in childhood. With all of that comes fresh waves of grief, anger, anxiety, fear, and so on.
Once you can see the trauma you suffered clearly then you have to get to work on healing yourself and figuring out how to live in your new reality. This is where I am right now. I left the UPC when I was 16, I’m now 49, that’s 33 years to get to this point. I am one of those people who is always working on myself, I’m introspective and I’m always seeking self improvement and it still took me 33 years. This is not a quick process and I suspect I will be healing from it forever. I am ok with that and I hope that you can be too. One of the hardest things is when the people you love or just the people you want to like you seem annoyed that “you’re still dealing with that?” They question why you can’t just forget and be happy. If you love me or even just like me some the best thing you can do for me is accept me where I’m at. Understand that this isn’t something that is just going to go away. It is something I’m working on all the time. Sit with me when I’m sad and don’t try to fix it, just let me know you’re there. Take me out for coffee and listen even if you’ve heard it a million times. Lastly try to remember that I’m doing my best.
My mother was a very strong woman. She often worked two jobs and still made the time to do things like refinishing the living room floor. We were very poor for most of my childhood but my mother would not consider asking the government for assistance. In the 70’s it was much easier for men to get out of paying child support and my father very rarely paid anything. Because of her stubborn resistance regarding asking for help, we often were on the edge of losing our housing and we often did not have enough to eat. I would walk home from school at lunch and scoop peanut butter out of the jar because that is all we had. I also have memories of my mother fishing for dinner. If she did not catch anything we did not have dinner. At times she would keep a cooler with milk, bologna, and maybe some kind of fruit. When you don’t have electricity it can be impossible to cook or keep food cold. It wasn’t always that bad but it happened pretty regularly.
Where did her resistance regarding asking for help come from? It can be traced back to her parents and religion. My grandparents were rugged people who believed you should help yourself through hard work and determination. They tended to only associate with others from their church because of fear of the world and the devil’s influence on it. They passed that fear down to my mother. They felt that you never ask the government for assistance and you don’t let them into your life if you can help it. This means don’t call the police unless you are dying and never answer the door for social services. You should never apply for things like food stamps because you would have to fill out government forms, thus giving them info about yourself and because you should be able to help yourself through hard work.
All of this kind of thinking tends to lead to isolation. You cannot ask for help without shame, you can only associate with others from your church, and your church is pretty anti-government. On the surface, it might seem like the UPC is patriotic and pro-government, but that isn’t really the truth. My grandparent’s Assemblies of God church was pretty much the same. Once you are isolated from the community around you all you can do is hope your church will help, in our case that help never came.
I have many memories of sitting on the floor at my grandparent’s house listening to the adults talking. They often talked about the end times and the One World Government. They speculated about who the anti-Christ was and how he would take over the U.S. They talked about the government being able to watch us through our televisions and about how someday they would be able to see through the walls of our homes. They felt we were already being watched. I know this may sound crazy to someone who has not grown up around this stuff but I assure you they believed it all. My mother and her family saw the government as evil and this meant you did not go to them unless you had no other option.
This distaste for the government may have led to my molestation not being reported. Sure the church did not want the bad press of having a molestation case coming out of their church, but there is also a distrust of the government happening there. In the end, the pastor is your government. He makes the rules, punishes the sinners, and decided who rises and who falls. You cannot question him because that is taboo.
1 Chronicles 16:22 “Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”
Anyone could be the anti-Christ. It could even be the U.S. president. He might even be serving right now. With that always being the case then how could you trust the government? It will be the government that eventually gives out the mark of the beast so…you can see where all of the fear comes from. The end result makes pastors into kings of their own little kingdoms. They are not to be questioned and if you do you will soon find yourself out in that cruel world they have warned you about. You will be shunned and subject to a different type of isolation.
All of these beliefs kept my family in poverty and kept my mother suffering for much of her life. It makes me sad that she worked herself to death trying to live and pay medical bills. It makes me angry that her mental illness went untreated for so long because she thought it was sin and not illness causing her depression. If she had not been afraid maybe she could have received help from the county with childcare, food stamps, and medical assistance. How could my life have been different if I had better medical care, enough food so that I could concentrate on school, and childcare so I wouldn’t have to be a latchkey kid? If some of these things had been in place maybe I would have not been such a good target for Steve Dahl. Being with him was an escape from a pretty hard life, at least I knew he would feed me.
Debbie McNulty 